Thanks for all the positive feedback on the Sametime 8.5 Meetings demo! It seems I've tapped some latent demand. Yes, we will be making these available on IBM.com as soon we clear the posting requirements. In the meantime, IBM'ers can download them from our internal Connections site (see my Files area). When the rest of them are done, we'll bundle them up and post a collection publicly.

If you're not familiar with Greenhouse, it's a live community where you can use Lotus Collaboration products for free. And now it features the first public beta of Sametime 8.5 Online Meetings. You've seen the tweets from members of the private beta... and now you can see what all the buzz is about!

"Sametime 8.5 Meetings are an entirely new way to collaborate with others online. They are incredibly easy to use. Fully integrated into the Connect client you already use for chat, they make it simple to join a meeting with a single click; invite others by dragging their names from the contact list; upload materials via drag and drop; even share your screen from the Macintosh operating system. Of course, not everyone can participate via a Sametime Connect client, so 8.5 includes a zero-download, firewall friendly browser client as well.

Sametime Meetings are different. Meeting rooms are reservationless and don't need to be scheduled. They can be instantly created and linked to calendar invitations from Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook. Sametime Meeting Rooms can also be persistent. You can use the same room over and over for regular meetings and keep frequently used materials on hand during the course of the project...."

Greenhouse will be updated with additional capabilities that are part of the 8.5 release over the next month or so. Come on over and tell us what you think!